Tandem
A prose poem. I never doubted for a minute how much my father loved me, but it took me a long time to understand what that entailed.
Strange to have this as one of the few real lessons my father taught me. Not that I haven’t learned, and don’t still learn, from his example: his earnestness, his enduring patience, his quiet devotion to my mother. But he gave me actual instructions as we launched our canoe from a muddy, shallow bulge into an inlet off Green Bay — to keep calm when the lake water rises around me, to know that the canoe is designed not to sink, even full of water, even upside down. Perhaps he was banking on my capacity to apply this lesson as I got older, the way high-school football prepares you to be a team player as an adult. Here the wisdom was that cooler heads prevail, that sudden crises can be conquered, that it’s good to know what is likely to happen next.
But I was only ten. There’s so much I missed. Like how he watched me from the bow, the canvas life jacket cradling my neck as he dipped his paddle first to one side, then the other, to keep us on course back to the house. How he waited for a sign, perhaps my fingers dragging briefly in the lake, that I had let my attention drift from his warning about what I was headed toward. And then his mustering his courage, his freckled hands grabbing the canoe’s sides, preparing to dump us both sputtering into the olive water. And his bracing himself to enter with me the depths of my coming misfortune.
Originally published in The Sun
Not Like This. Not Alone.
Not Like This. Not Alone.
He’d rather embrace this lonely disappointment
As others do, long married, wet from a shower,
Squeezing behind his wife at the basin
Almost audibly as if sealed in laminate.
There’s dignity in that—a bathroom steaming,
A naked woman flossing, his body beaded,
Glistening and framed in the doorway.
He would have that special someone to blame,
Hate for a time, and forgive, as she would him
When her own sadness sweetened and turned clear.
Then, he’d write off the expense as time spent,
Admit that there’s pity behind affection,
And hear the kisses at his temple murmur,
We tried. We’re trying. Sweetheart, this is it.
Originally published in the Los Angeles Review
Conciliatory
Conciliatory
The dead don’t deserve our respect.
Shortly before the earth begins
Healing around them,
They stop returning our calls.
They won’t climb out of bed
To help move an armoire,
Gauge a sauce’s spice,
Hear us through our pain
Until morning.
They’re like bad parents, and we’re so forgiving.
What reason do we give them to change?
We raise buildings, dedicate books,
Quote advice that doesn’t apply,
And for what? To put their names in the air
Like the scent of lemon after dusting.
originally published in BorderSenses
Edinburgh Elegy
Edinburgh Elegy
His mother’s friends
Promised her they’d release
A film canister of his ashes
Near Arthur’s Seat,
Where I took his picture
Sitting at the top
On the brass marker that gives
The direction and distance
To places we’d been,
Or hoped to go.
Should I love one place more
Than Loch Lomond or Stranraer,
Now that he’s part
Of its pollen and dirt?
I don’t know;
I’m as new to this
As I was to the city
We climbed above
As it rained without conviction,
Thin clouds of mist
Folding in the firth.
Originally published in Migrants and Stowaways
Triste
Triste
Whatever drips from us,
Sometimes pours,
Blood, mucous, sweat,
Urine, semen, tears,
Whatever is waxy or wet,
Viscous or slick,
Mostly in sickness
But also in health
We just can’t contain ourselves.
There’s always something
Gathering, massing,
Welling up, looking for the closest
Causeway, pore, portal, duct—
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia
Amicable
Is hard to say
For a reason.
Acceptance
Always ends with a hiss.
The longer you say trust
The more I’ll hear
Your uncertainty.
I can stay
In the middle of blame
For as long as my breath can hold it.